Socialist protesters and paraphernalia dominated today’s left-wing protest rally in Washington, DC. The so-called “One Nation” rally was led by labor unions as an attempt to counter Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally, which took place in DC on 8-28

Tea Party-linked activists are looking for vengeance after the Florida Supreme Court rejected a ballot initiative aimed at sparing the state from a key provision in the federal health care overhaul.

The state’s highest court last month ruled against a ballot question asking voters to approve an amendment to the state constitution stating that residents would not have to follow the new federal requirement to buy health insurance. Before the decision, Florida was set to be one of four states putting that question to voters in November.

Conservatives now want Floridians to express their dissatisfaction with the law in a different way — by voting out the judges who shot down the question.

“The court overstepped its bounds,” said Jesse Phillips, founder of conservative activist group Citizen2Citizen. Phillips’ group has linked up with the Central Florida Tea Party Council in a campaign to oust two of the five judges who struck down the ballot question. The other three are not on the ballot this year.

The groups are embarking on an uphill battle, which Phillips acknowledged. They have no funding, are not planning to run any ads and are trying to launch a word-of-mouth campaign with just weeks to go before an election dominated by a noisy gubernatorial race and a three-way contest for an open Senate seat.

Phillips also noted that in Florida state history, no judge has ever been voted out.

~Hi My mother taught me long ago to vote NO on all Judges ‘unless’ we knew them to be honorable. I even actively demonstrated on Two Circuit Court Judges. Had success in leading to the ouster of one of them, who , last I knew, was serving time in a Federal Prison. So IMO it CAN be done. I never did understand why we had to go through the farcical process of voting for judges anyway. ~JP

“It would be historic, but I think it’s attainable,” Phillips said. “We’re not in this to lose.”

The judges — Justice Jorge Labarga and Justice James Perry — are not running in a traditional election in which they would face an opponent. Instead, they face what is known as a “merit retention” vote. Under Florida law, judges’ names are put to the public for an up-or-down vote after they are appointed. If voters approve, the judge stays; if voters do not approve, the judge leaves and the governor fills the vacancy.

Florida Supreme Court spokesman Craig Waters said judges have to go through a complicated process, which typically entails proving they have opposition, just to campaign for these elections.

He said Perry and Labarga have not taken those steps and so would not engage their critics on the health care decision.

“They do not have active campaigns and so at this point they are not responding to matters like that,” Waters said.

In the 5-2 decision last month, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that the ballot question summary was “misleading” and should be removed. The courts objected to “subjective” language such as a section that referred to “mandates that don’t work.”

State officials conceded that point but asked the court on appeal to substitute the text of the entire amendment in place of the summary to avoid any confusion. In its opinion, the court ruled that it did not have the authority to do so because the state Legislature had earlier approved the summary for the ballot.

Phillips, though, claimed the court defied its own precedent. Central Florida Tea Party Council founder Jason Hoyt, in a written statement, called the decision a “power grab.”

Though running against the grain, conservative activists could have a friend in Republican Rick Scott, a health care executive who campaigned hard against the federal overhaul, if he wins the race for governor in Florida. Phillips said that if voters defy history and oust the two judges, he would hope Scott — if elected — would appoint a replacement sympathetic to their cause.

Phillips said that at the very least, he hopes his “voter education campaign” will help pave the way for a similar ballot question in 2012.

A Guam lawmaker is criticizing U.S. plans for missile defense as insufficiently specific about whether missile batteries would be located on the Pacific island, the Pacific News Center reported today (see GSN, Jan. 15).

In a press release, Senator Judi Guthertz stated that “language salted away within the [Record of Decision] suggests that Guam is just one of many possible sites for the missile system.” That appears to contradict language in a Pentagon environmental impact statement that indicated an antimissile system would be deployed on the U.S. territory, according to the news organization.

The chairwoman of the Legislative Committee on Guam Military Buildup and Homeland Security sent a letter today to Assistant Navy Secretary Jackalyne Pfannenstiel that requests information on any revision of the plan (Kevin Kerrigan, Pacific News Center, Sept. 29).

“The Record of Decision (ROD) has gone backwards on a very crucial decision. This is the ballistic missile defense system needed to protect Guam,” Guthertz wrote in her letter.

Guthertz stated that North Korea has mentioned developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of striking Guam. “Will these missiles have nuclear warheads or chemical warheads?” she asked.

In March, South Korean media reported that North Korea had established a new army division to manage the fielding of recently developed medium-range missiles capable of striking targets in Japan and Guam (see GSN, March 17).

“How can any other site compete with Guam for protection against a ballistic missile attack? Why is further study needed? Is the United States serious about making Guam a militarily significant strategic asset? If so, it must be protected,” Guthertz wrote.

She said that more than $20 billion is planned to be spent on a U.S. military buildup on Guam, including new structures to support the missions of B-1, B-2 and B-52 long-range bombers.

“If the buildup is to proceed we in Guam should be entitled to the protections from enemy missile attacks just like any other American community. After all: We are Americans too,” Guthertz wrote (Senator Judi Guthertz release, Sept. 29).

If you are paying attention to the politics surrounding the midterm elections – and, for the good of the country, you should be – then you have, no doubt, heard almost everyone from the Left side of the aisle using the word “extreme” where the Tea Party is concerned. To a lesser extent they use it to describe the Conservative movement as a whole but without doubt, it is the descriptor of choice when anyone of the Liberal or Progressive persuasion talks about the Tea Party. This tactic comes straight from the Progressive playbook.

~Mike Royko was a hero to me & helped me on my stalking case when the perp called me from Coook County Jail

The first, Boss, examines the genesis of the Chicago Machine – Mayor Richard J. “The King Maker” Daley’s Chicago Democrat Machine – and Chicago style politics. It is important because it not only sheds light on how “The Machine” came to be, but how it operates. Barack Obama, Dick Durbin, Rahm Emanuel, Luis Gutierrez and Jan Schakowsky, to name but a few, are all products of “The Machine.” “The Machine” has been responsible for the election of every Democrat president since John F. Kennedy.

The latter, Rules for Radicals, outlines the guidelines for growing and advancing the agenda of the Progressive Left. It outlines thirteen specific rules that the Progressives commit themselves to from birth, at least that’s the way it seems. They are:

1. Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the expertise of your people.
3. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. Develop operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. Push the negative…every positive has its negative.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.

Combined, these two books not only define the “game plan” used by the Obama campaign team to attain the White House – and the game plan they will no doubt employ during the midterm elections and the 2012 General Election, but provide an ideological window through which we can understand how the Progressives have moved everything from healthcare to the Great Society and before that the New Deal.

Two rules that are coming into play this midterm election cycle are rules eleven and thirteen, what many would consider the most effective of Alinsky’s rules:
11. Push the negative…every positive has its negative; and
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.

In pushing the negative and personalizing a target – in this case the Tea Party movement – Progressive and Liberal operatives employ the tools of buzzwords and talking points. To be fair, both sides of the aisle use these tools, but a quick look at “the rules,” a book written before Lee Atwater arrived on the scene, provides conclusive evidence – in rules five and eleven – that Progressives not only own their birthright, but refined the tactic of deploying them to a level of potency not seen before in American politics.

The word Progressives and Liberal Democrats are employing in an attempt to not only shock and frighten independent and undecided voters but to misinform and deceive the total of the American electorate, is, “extreme.” The Republicans running in the 2010 midterm elections – and especially the Tea Party-backed candidates – are, they say, “extreme.” Progressives and Liberals are banking on the probability that many will hear the label enough times that it will be believed without examination. They do so with the added benefit of having a mainstream media that is extremely (no pun intended) reluctant to questioning the claim.

“…exceeding what is usual or reasonable; immoderate; very strict, rigid, or severe; drastic…”

The word “extreme” defined, let’s take a look at what the Tea Party stands for; what its platform is:

1) Limited government
2) Limited and equitable taxation
3) Fiscal responsibility
4) Adherence to the constitutional process in the crafting of legislation

Where the “Young Guns” of the GOP have done a commendable job of putting together a “Pledge to America,” and whereas many Tea Party groups include addition items, almost each of the planks can be a subheading for these four general tenets.

That said, even a cursory comparison of the definition of “extreme” and the tenets of the Tea Party reveals that something isn’t quite right where calling the Tea Party “extreme” is concerned.